The Dragon in the Mountain

Chapter Three

I wake up on a stone floor, surrounded by gold coins. I stretch my arms, yawn and sit up. What an odd dream...

I open my eyes fully and take in my surroundings with surprise. I'm in the cavern, in the middle of the lake of gold and gems. It seems it wasn't a dream. I look at a stone statue behind me, it's some sort of symbol that faces the entrance to the cave. I lean back, resting against it and sigh. What have I gotten myself into?

I hear the swishing of gold coins behind me. I know it must be the creature, come to finish me off. A voice booms from behind me, and I am shaking with pure terror.

"Why are you here?" The creature growls.

I dare not turn around, for fear that it might crush me for being so foolish. My voice is shaky as I reply. "I...I was....um....curious."

"That is not a good enough reason!" The cavern shakes from the noise. Surely help won't be too long. If they can hear the noise, and if they've realised I'm missing, they must've sent a rescue party by now.

"Then what is?" I retort. I try to sound confident, but I feel like I'm going to pass out. "I was only speaking the truth!"

"Answer me one question. How did you survive?"

I was aware of the sudden change of subject, but expecting this might happen. "I'm not sure... I've always been immune to fire. I don't know how, I just am."

The creature sighs. "I'm not going to get a straight answer from you, am I?"

"Probably not. I have a habit of being discreet."

It begins to walk towards me, I could hear the gold coins swishing as it moved. I tense up and hold my breath, ready to run if I needed to. It stops right behind the statue. I could feel it's hot breath on the back of my neck. The long silence is deafening.

After a few minutes, it finally speaks. "I'm going to give you a choice. Either you leave now and return to your normal life, to not tell of your experience here, and to never come back, or you stay here and never see your family and friends again."

I'm surprised and relieved at the options, and very confused. "You....you're not going to kill me?"

"What? No no no. See, you can't be burned, so how am I supposed to kill you?"

I didn't want to push my luck too far, but I did anyway. "Don't you have...um, claws?"

It chuckled. "Well, yes. But I don't want to get blood stains all over the gold."

I shuddered. "Ok, well...um...if I chose to go back, how would I explain my absence?"

"Oh, just think of something. Maybe you went out to the forest for a while."

What forest? It was torn down for buildings before I was even born. "How...how long have you been down here?"

"Probably a few generations for you humans, but a mere blink of an eye for a dragon."

I sat up straight so quickly that I hit my head on the statue. A dragon? A real, live dragon? That was a pretty big turn of events, I had assumed it was a basilisk or something that had at least been sighted in the last decade. A dragon hasn't been seen in centuries.